154 Quotes by Miriam Toews

She was becoming sad. There is no joy involved in following others' expectations of yourself.

Freedom is good... [i]t's better than slavery. And forgiveness is good, better than revenge. And hope for the unknown is good, better than hatred of the familiar.

We are wasting time, pleads Greta, by passing this burden, this sack of stones, from one to the next, by pushing our pain away. We mustn’t do this. We mustn’t play Hot Potato with our pain. Let’s absorb it ourselves, each of us, she says. Let’s inhale it, let’s digest it, let’s process it into fuel.

Doubt and uncertainty and questioning are inextricably bound together with faith

Perhaps depression is caused by asking oneself too many unanswerable questions.

What sorts of things do you google when your favorite person in the world is determined to leave it?

He is the same chap who informed me that there are unusually high numbers of Mennonites who suffer from depression but nobody knows why. I said, Well, thank you for that! As cheerfully as if I was accepting a plate of homemade Christmas cookies from one of my students.

None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agata states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body.

Greta has many times announced that she is no longer a Mennonite -- and yet was born from Mennonites and continues to live as a Mennonite, with Mennonites, in a Mennonite colony, where she speaks the Mennonite language. Those things do not make me a Mennonite, Greta argues. [I] don't know where to go.